Forum:Treasure
Update 11/1 If you have feedback about how this page is written or set-up, go ahead with it. I'm done with my edits and it's safe to make changes now without them being (accidentally, of course) overwritten. My problem with the current situation is pretty simple. The page is big. I considered making the item tables collapsible, but I flat-out don't know how to do that. It might even warrant or require edits to the js, MediaWiki:Wikia.css, which obviously hasn't been touched for a year, what with Headrock not being around. --Spearman D92-R (talk) 23:44, November 1, 2013 (UTC) Update 10/30 I am preparing a draft for the article with a little assumption that Lair should direct to (or simply be) Encounter, the yet-to-be-written generic page for encounter zones. In my experience "Lair" is the nomenclature for any lair, not just the Monster Lair (a specific kind of weak lair). If anyone objects to this, shoot.--Spearman D92-R (talk) 23:39, October 30, 2013 (UTC) :Yeah, I think Lair is any Encounter that has a set location, including node encounters. If Encounter is the page then the generic Lair should redirect there instead of the Monster Lair that it redirects to now. Does that fit with your thoughts? Are you thinking that rampaging monsters and such are part of the Encounter page or something separate? MysticX2 (talk) 01:11, October 31, 2013 (UTC) :: I had not thought of rampaging monsters as an encounter. I guess they could be. We'll sort it out on the encounter/lair page then... --Spearman D92-R (talk) 01:26, October 31, 2013 (UTC) :One thing to know is that most of the spells include a link to Lairs, having a statement to the effect of...With at least __ Spellbook, the _____ spell may be acquired as a reward for winning encounters in creature Lairs, Towers, et cetera, or when conquering the Fortress of a rival wizard who has already researched this spell. MysticX2 (talk) 01:16, October 31, 2013 (UTC) :: currently the only reason Lair is not a redlink is that it redirects to Monster Lair, where headrock seems to indicate that he intended to use the word "encounter" on this site to refer to generic "lairs." I, well, just think it might be better to use both the words to refer to generic lairs, and kill that redirect once an actual generic lair page is up. --Spearman D92-R (talk) 01:26, October 31, 2013 (UTC) : I had a quick browsing through the articles using the word Lair. As MysticX2 already said, (almost?) all spells use the wording: the ___ spell ''may be acquired as a reward for winning encounters in creature Lairs, Towers, et cetera''. There are only a few pages that use the single word Lairs in another context. Sss'ra, Trolls, Klackons will use it and redirect you to Encounter. Transmute says: Transmute will also not affect Encounter zones, such as Towers of Sorcery, Lairs, Ruins, et cetera. I guess Transmute has to be changed. : About Encounter: All pages I saw use it in the context of Encounter zones (meaning creature lairs, nodes and towers of wizardry). The different lairs begin with: Fallen Temple is a type of Encounter zone. The hero pages have wordings like: On defeating an Encounter of at least moderate difficulty, there is a small chance that your reward will include a Prisoner previously held captive in this Encounter zone. Normal Unit begins with: Normal Units are combat units that are created in a Town and will either garrison the town for protection or will be a part of a group that will be sent out to conquer new towns, guard newly created towns, or battle enemies they may Encounter. : So Lair is a synonyme for creature Lairs, Encounter is a synonyme for Encounter zones. In your position I would write Encounter first (if you want to include how guards are chosen and how treasure is generated). Not sure what to do with Lair (of course it shouldn't redirect to Monster Lair). I wouldn't include raiders or rampagning monsters in Encounter. RJAK (talk) 06:35, October 31, 2013 (UTC) :: Well, luckily there seems to be little-to-no need to make retroactive changes, then. No matter whether the generic page is called Lair or Encounter, the other term can just redirect to it. I haven't actually seen much reference to Monster Lairs (the specific lair), nor Encounters as anything but the zones. --Spearman D92-R (talk) 12:42, October 31, 2013 (UTC) :What's the question? Use Lair as a disambiguation page. Problem solved. ::I've been reluctant to make changes to whatever the guy who founded the wiki, Headrock, had going. This isn't that big of a deal though, I just wanted some opinions... --Spearman D92-R (talk) 21:01, October 31, 2013 (UTC) ::: With a disambiguation page, there's no conflict. You bridge between the original concept and the public perception. If such a bridge is necessary, then disambig is required. If it isn't necessary, then there is no need to do anything. Thread start I mentioned to MX2 that my attention was drawn to Treasure. For the past few months I've mainly been trying to "flesh out" existing articles, and I said at one point to Twilight that I think we should focus on heavily-linked articles, but I think I might have been wrong in saying that. Something like Roads, and surely Treasure, is really valuable even if it isn't linked a whole lot, because the article contains a lot of straight dope on the game. : From what I remember (it was a while ago), Headrock actually worked up from the least linked articles upwards. Maybe that's why is still red-linked. I have a copy of the OSG, and while the major mechanics seem in-line with what is going on in 1.31, some stuff is left unclear or is demonstrably innacurate. I might think of further questions later, but for starters: * The game does not cap the mana value of items found in lairs even though it should; moreover, there is only a limited selection from the 250 seen in ITEMMAKE that can appear. I want to go through the items we have in our data and make a kind of informal list of the ones that have appeared for me (I'm pretty sure I've seen every possible treasure item four or five times in the very least), to see if there is any kind of pattern. Possibly with their numerical listing order. I'd like any insight anyone can give me from the code, or link me to on the excellent Realms Beyond forum. * Also I don't really know what it takes to get a 2-pick retort exactly. Maybe the game chooses randomly from among the retorts, and if 2 specials are in the loot, and if the first one picked is a 2-pick, it draws? This would be important to infer the exact probabilities. OSG says 75% spellbook and 25% retort and I believe that, but it is impossible to solve the chances on a 2-pick from just this fact. * Next I'd like to find out exactly which spells are drawn below their rarity. (for example Enchant Item is considered common by the loot procedure even though it is uncommon by research cost ranking). Only Some arcane spells? All arcane spells? Do any of the realm spells do this? A bunch of realm spells have had their rarity adjusted since version 1.2, and this part might not have been patched. ...? * Another issue with spells in the loot is that owning 2 books in the color should permit rare, and 3 should permit very rare. Am I mistaken in thinking that this rule is breached often? Maybe it has something to do with the above? * Towers guarantee a spell. I suppose that this is always the first item in a tower's loot pile, so it spends as much of the budget as possible on the spell, making it quite likely to be Very Rare (800pts out of the 437 - 1875 treasure points in towers on impossible). Does this sound right? Possibly more questions coming. There's an article to write up... Spearman D92-R (talk) 22:08, October 19, 2013 (UTC) :I have no research done in this topic. So I just can say how I interprete the information of the Strategy Guide. :Also I don't really know what it takes to get a 2-pick retort exactly. You can only get a 2 pick retort, if you find 2 specials as treasure. The game rolls a die. There's a 25 % chance that you'll get a retort. The game rolls another die to determine the kind of retort. Each possible retort has the same chance to appear. If a 1 pick retort was picked, the procedure will be repeated. So you could get a retort as first pick and a retort as second pick. This means that 1 pick retorts have nearly a double as high chance to appear as 2 pick retorts. :: Got it. Are the 2-pick retorts excluded from treasures that only have one pick?--Spearman D92-R (talk) 20:25, October 20, 2013 (UTC) ::: Yes, 2-pick retorts are excluded from treasures that only have one pick. RJAK (talk) 21:51, October 22, 2013 (UTC) :Next I'd like to find out exactly which spells are drawn below their rarity. ... Do any of the realm spells do this? Spells have an internal number according to their realm and research cost. So I'd say it's excluded that you get for example a very rare spell if the reward is a rare spell. I have heard somewhere that you just can get spells as treasure which are already in your spellbook (Apprentice/F3). Dunno if you can get a rare spell, if all possible very rare spells are already taken. Dunno what spell ranks the arcane spells have. :: You can definitely get a spell that is not in the spellbook. The internal number sounds like the origin of the issue with certain heroes not having spells they are supposed to know.--Spearman D92-R (talk) 20:25, October 20, 2013 (UTC) :Towers guarantee a spell. I suppose that this is always the first item in a tower's loot pile, so it spends as much of the budget as possible on the spell, making it quite likely to be Very Rare. The Strategy Guide says something different. It says that there's an equal chance that a common, uncommon, rare or very rare spell is chosen, if enough treasure points are left. But there's a chance that the spell treasure is chosen multiple times. In this case spell ranks are summed. For example you could get a very rare spell for 200 treasure points if the game chooses common 4 times in a row. About towers: since there's a 100 treasure point spell discount on the forced first spell pick, I could imagine that the first spell pick is never common. Has anybody ever seen a common spell as reward in towers? RJAK (talk) 05:55, October 20, 2013 (UTC) ::Yes, it does say that. I was wondering if it is entirely correct. Rare and very rare seem highly overrepresented to me (chance of NOT getting them would supposedly be ~(50%)(80%)^n where n = number of items in the hoard beyond the first spell, usually 1-3). Don't recall seeing a common spell. Anyhow, thanks for your responses. There's a lot to research. For now I'll be working on an item list, I think. If no one knows what the issues are with the items, I'll probably write a little bot and run it for a day or two to make some good guesses. --Spearman D92-R (talk) 20:25, October 20, 2013 (UTC) :::Did some tests with ILSe's tweaker and discovered some strange behavior about this. Attacked a tower. :::# 2 books, no spells known - common spells. :::# 2 books, all commons known - uncommon spells. :::# 2 books, all uncommons known - rare spells. :::# 2 books, all rares known - no spell. not even arcane?! :::# 3 books, no spells known - very rare spells. :::--Spearman D92-R (talk) 00:38, November 3, 2013 (UTC) ::::I assume that's a tower with a Very Rare spell inside. So if you haven't 3 books the game must revert to a less valuable spell and according to your data it fails sometimes. Perhaps it tries to give you a spell that is currently in your researchable spell list (if you haven't 3 books). :::: Have you ever seen an Arcane spell as a reward? Can you tell what you mean by "all rares known". Does it mean all rares & uncommon & common known? ::::I haven't used the Tweaker yet. I use MoMSaveEditor. There you've the option to choose whether a spell is learnable or not. Does learnable influence the outcome (e.g. if you have 2 books but turn very rare spells to learnable)? RJAK (talk) 08:33, November 3, 2013 (UTC) ::::: I have received arcane spells, but I can't say if they were from a tower. I got the impression that the spell I received was of the same value range as one of the realms rarity range. I'm sure Spell of Mastery would be exempt. MysticX2 (talk) 13:05, November 3, 2013 (UTC) ::::: Cannot remember ever seeing an arcane spell when the reward was supposed to be very rare, but that should be considered untested. I've seen all the possible arcane spells before, and I don't know why one wouldn't have turned up in the "all rares known" case (it meant I knew all comm, unc, and rare from the books' realm). Doubt learnable has an effect. All spells were either known or unresearchable, and the tower awarded the unresearchable ones anyway. I might check on it though.--Spearman D92-R (talk) 15:42, November 3, 2013 (UTC) :About that list: I agree that artifacts with certain enchantments never show up. Some of those missing items are wasteful or not worth their costs. For example Bird of Paradise has got the useless combination Magic Immunity + Righteousness, or World Ender/Orc Smasher has got Chaos + Phantasmal, or Club of Chaos has got Chaos and 10 % to hit. Theodores Liberator is the most expensive item but I've seen it already many times. RJAK (talk) 21:51, October 22, 2013 (UTC) Botted Magic Items For a couple days my computer has been playing MoM and throwing all items it found into excel. I did some batch conversions to get the output ready for a wikitable. I also inputted properties directly from the 250 items in itemmake (name, id#, mana value, type of item) into excel to make things sortable. This part was super tedious, but now I can revise and sort these lists without it being a nightmare. I tested various lairs. Every "normal" kind of treasure pile seemed to draw from a wide selection of the 250 items. I have no idea what the logic is, either on how the full base selection is created, or on what item is eventually chosen. Some items seem ten or fifteen times as likely to appear as others, and this varies with the particular lair (or random seed, or whatever. I have no idea). The "failed specials" (items that replace a spellbook/retort which cannot be awarded after 13/6) are supposed to be of "potentially unlimited power", as the OSG says, but in truth they just draw from a smaller selection, and not even a stronger one. This selection size might be 128, minus any items drawn that will never appear. I can say with some certainty (having looked over the itemmake list, botted a lot of items, and simply played this game a lot) that the default items with Haste, Phantasmal, and Chaos/Doom never appear. I am also fairly sure that items with Regeneration, Merging, and jewelry with certain expensive properties like Invulnerability do not appear. This leads me into a theory that the game is sorting and selecting items as treasure based somehow on their properties. I think that every item without a glowing aura of some kind, or any spell charges, is available at all times. Below is a list. The left-hand column lists items which I have seen. If you have seen any items from the right-hand column in treasure, please advise. : (Deleted item lists) - This issue can be considered resolved, I think. The lists here are huge, so I'm deleting them. --Spearman D92-R (talk) 23:44, November 1, 2013 (UTC)